The only good news in the General Assembly’s debate over Amendment 41 is that it cannot end in a deadlock.
Whatever is unclear about the ethics-reform measure, this much is certain: The amendment passed and now requires an enabling law by the end of the session.
Last week, House Speaker Andrew Romanoff called reporters to his office to discuss the House plan to implement 41. The bill sets up an ethics commission, per the amendment, but it also defines some categories of reward to government employees and their families that are not covered by the ethics rules.
Definitions seemed necessary because lobbyists and folks upset about losing free lunches claimed the ethics amendment prohibited scholarships for cops’ kids or donations to injured firefighters.
Such hysterical horse hockey continues to drive the debate. On Wednesday, a Senate committee and sponsors of a Senate bill that sets up an ethics commission spent two hours complaining about Amendment 41 and insulting its sponsors. The committee passed a bare-bones enabling bill and sent it on to another committee for more whining. But not before Sen. Chris Romer lamented that 41 kept Gov. Bill Ritter from taking a free trip on Lufthansa Airlines’ new Denver-Munich flight.
You wonder why Romer doesn’t get that Ritter should not take a free ride from an airline that might later want favors. Regardless, until a court issues an injunction against 41, the carping is futile.
Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald claims that “you could interpret the (House) bill as gutting 41.”
She can read the House bill as she likes. Most folks who voted for 41 are not upset over clarifications that preserve such things as scholarships for cops’ kids and firefighter-injury funds.
Romanoff, on the other hand, can dismount his high horse. He says the House bill “is the right approach that gives the people of Colorado a way to get on with their lives.” Unless, of course, the Supreme Court rules the exclusions in the bill are unconstitutional or if the court refuses to offer an advisory opinion before the bill’s final passage. Then, Romanoff says, those sections of the law would not go into effect.
The truth is that the House bill won’t get through the two Senate committee votes and two Senate floor votes required to forward it to the justices.
Meanwhile, Fitz-Gerald’s claim that the legislature lacks the power to clarify the language of 41 flies in the face of an opinion by the assembly’s legislative counsel, which has told Romanoff that the House bill – with definitions – is constitutional.
Romanoff and Fitz-Gerald need to meet and work this out. It’s also time to shovel the horse hockey about illegal scholarships and injury funds in a toxic waste bin marked “stinking hyperbole.”
Romanoff’s House bill would specifically take care of these problems. He wants to take the mystery out of the game.
Fitz-Gerald only favors empaneling the state ethics commission, but even she doesn’t think the commission would find a violation of 41 merely because a government employee, an elected official or their families got a scholarship.
Romanoff and Fitz-Gerald both understand that this amendment was meant to keep folks from violating the public trust for private gain. They can find common ground. But they’ll never till it as long as guys like Senate President pro tem Peter Groff waste time berating Common Cause and millionaire Jared Polis, the sponsors who put 41 on the ballot.
At Wednesday’s Senate committee hearing, Groff accused Common Cause executive director Jenny Flanagan of turning the General Assembly into a “legislative janitorial service for this mess you wrote and Jared Polis paid for.”
Groff would sound less hypocritical if he wasn’t among the legislature’s top takers of free tickets from lobbyists and others. Guys like Groff are the reason Amendment 41 passed. Every time he opens his mouth to complain, the room reeks of sour grapes.
It’s time for legislators to pinch their collective noses, craft a compromise on 41 and move on.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-954-1771, jspencer@denverpost.com or blogs.denverpost.com/spencer.
